Red Seas Under Red Skies (50 page)

“Gods
damn
you,” Mazucca cried, “d'you think I'm a fuckin' child?”

The crewman fumbled at his belt for a weapon—a short club, Jean saw. But Mazucca's blood was up, and the crewman was still recovering from the blow. In a moment, Mazucca had kicked him in the chest and snatched the club for himself. He raised it above his head, but that was as far as he got. Three or four crewfolk hit him simultaneously, knocking him to the deck and wrestling the club from his hand.

Heavy footsteps beat rapidly from the quarterdeck to the waist. Captain Drakasha had come without being summoned.

As she flew past, Jean—his rope work quite forgotten—felt his stomach flutter. She had
it
. She wore it like a cloak. The same aura that he'd once seen in Capa Barsavi, something that slept inside until it was drawn out by anger or need, so sudden and so terrible. Death itself was beating a tread upon the ship's planks.

Drakasha's crewfolk had Mazucca up and pinned by the arms. The man who'd been hit by the bucket had retrieved his club and was rubbing his head nearby. Zamira came to a halt and pointed at him.

“Explain yourself, Tomas.”

“I was…I was…sorry, Cap'n. Just having some fun.”

“He's been hounding me all fuckin' afternoon,” said Mazucca, subdued but nowhere near calm. “Hasn't done a lick of work. Just follows me around, kicks my bucket, takes my tools, messes up my shit and sets me to fixing it again.”

“True, Tomas?”

“I just…it was just fun, Cap'n. Teasing the scrub watch. Didn't mean nothing. I'll stop.”

Drakasha moved so fast Tomas didn't even have time to flinch until he was already on his way back to the deck, his nose broken. Jean had noted the elegant upward sweep of her arm and the precise use of the palm—he'd been on the receiving end of that sort of blow at least twice in his life. Tomas, stupid ass that he was, had his sympathy.

“Agggh,” said Tomas, spraying blood.

“The scrub watch are like tools,” said Drakasha. “I expect them to be kept in a useful trim. Maintained. You want to have fun, you make sure it's responsible fun. I'm halving your share of the
Red Messenger
loot, and your share of the sale.” She gestured to the women standing behind him. “You two. Haul him aft and find Scholar Treganne.”

As Tomas was being dragged toward the quarterdeck for a surprise visit to the ship's physiker, Drakasha turned to Mazucca.

“You heard my rules, first night you were on my ship.”

“I know. I'm sorry, Captain Drakasha, he just—”

“You did hear. You
did
hear what I said, and you understood.”

“I did, I was angry, I—”

“Death to touch a weapon. I made that clear as a cloudless sky, and you did it anyway.”

“Look—”

“I've got no use for you,” she said, and her right arm darted out to close around Mazucca's throat. The crewfolk released him, and he locked his hands around Drakasha's forearm, to no avail. She began dragging him toward the starboard rail. “Out here, you lose your head, you make one dumb gods-damned mistake, you can take the whole ship down. If you can't keep your wits when you've been told what's at stake, clear and simple, you're just ballast.”

Kicking and gagging, Mazucca tried to fight back, but Drakasha hauled him inexorably toward the side of the weather deck. About two yards from the rail, she gritted her teeth, drew her right arm back, and flung Mazucca forward, putting the full power of hip and shoulder into the push. He hit hard, flailing for balance, and toppled backward. A second later there was the sound of a splash.

“This ship has ballast enough.”

Crewfolk and scrub watch alike ran to the starboard rail. After a quick glance at Locke, Jean got up to join them. Drakasha remained where she was, arms at her side, her sudden rage evaporated. In that, too, she seemed like Barsavi. Jean wondered if she would spend the rest of the night sullen and brooding, or even drinking.

The ship had been making a steady four or five knots, and Mazucca didn't appear to be a strong swimmer. He was already five or six yards to the side of the ship, and fifteen or twenty yards back, off the quarterdeck. His arms and head bobbed against the rippling darkness of the waves, and he hollered for help.

Dusk. Jean shuddered. A hungry time on the open sea. The hard light of day drove many things deep beneath the waves, made the water nearly safe for hours on end. All that changed at twilight.

“Shall we fish him out, Captain?” A crewman had stepped up beside her, and he spoke in a voice so low that only those nearby could hear.

“No,” said Drakasha. She turned and began to walk slowly aft. “Sail on. Something will be along for him soon enough.”

3

ON THE
nineteenth, at half past noon, Drakasha shouted for Locke to come to her cabin. Locke ran aft as fast as he could, visions of Tomas and Mazucca vivid in his mind.

“Ravelle, what the unhallowed hells
is
this?”

Locke paused to take in the scene. She'd rigged her table in the center of the cabin. Paolo and Cosetta were seated across from one another, staring at Locke, and a deck of playing cards was spread in an unfathomable pattern between them. A silver goblet was tipped over in the middle of the table…a goblet too large for little hands. Locke felt a flutter of anxiety in the pit of his stomach, but looked closer nonetheless.

As he'd suspected…a mouthful or so of pale brown liquor had spilled onto the tabletop from the goblet, and fallen across a card. That card had dissolved into a puddle of soft, completely unmarked gray material.

“You took the cards out of my chest,” he said. “The ones in the double-layered oilcloth parcel.”

“Yes.”

“And you were drinking a fairly strong liquor with your meal. One of your children spilled it.”

“Caramel brandy, and I spilled it myself.” She produced a dagger and poked at the gray material. Although it had a liquid sheen, it was hard and solid, and the tip of the dagger slid off it as though it were granite. “What the hell
is
this? It's like…alchemical cement.”

“It
is
alchemical cement. You didn't notice that the cards smelled funny?”

“Why the hell would I smell playing cards?” She frowned. “Children, don't touch these anymore. In fact, go sit on your bed until Mommy can wash your hands.”

“It's not dangerous,” said Locke.

“I don't care,” she said. “Paolo, Cosetta, put your hands in your laps and wait for Mommy.”

“They're not really cards,” said Locke. “They're alchemical resin wafers. Paper-thin and flexible. The card designs are actually painted on. You wouldn't believe how expensive they were.”

“Nor would I care. What the hell are they
for
?”

“Isn't it obvious? Dip one in strong liquor and it dissolves in a few seconds. Suddenly you've got a little pat of alchemical cement. Mash up as many cards as you need. The stuff dries in about a minute, hard as steel.”

“Hard as steel?” She eyed the gray splotch on her fine lacquered tabletop. “How does it come off?”

“Um…it doesn't. There's no solvent. At least not outside of an alchemist's lab.”

“What? Gods damn it, Ravelle—”

“Captain, you're being unfair. I didn't ask you to take those cards out and play with them. Nor did I spill liquor on them.”

“You're right,” said Drakasha with a sigh. She looked tired, Locke thought. The faint frown lines around her mouth looked as though they'd had a long recent workout. “Gather these up and throw them overboard.”

“Captain, please.
Please
.” Locke held his hands out toward her. “Not only are they expensive, they'd be…damned impossible to duplicate. It'd take months. Let me just roll them back up in oilcloth and put them in the chest. Please think of them as part of my papers.”

“What do you use them for?”

“They're just part of my little bag of tricks,” he said. “All I have left of it, really. One last, important little trick. I swear to you, they're absolutely no threat to you and your ship…. You have to spill booze on them, and even then they're just an annoyance. Look, if you save them for me, and find me some knives with scalpel edges, I'll devote all my time to getting that shit off your table. Prying from the sides. Even if it takes all week. Please.”

As it turned out, it took him ten hours, scraping away with infinite care atop the forecastle, as though he were performing surgery. He worked without rest, first by sunlight and then by the glow of multiple lanterns, until the devilishly hard stuff had been scraped off with nothing but a ghost upon the lacquer to show for it.

When he finally claimed his minuscule sleeping space, he knew his hands and forearms would ache well into the next day.

It was worth it, and had been worth every minute of work, to preserve the existence of that deck of cards.

4

ON THE
twentieth, Drakasha gave up on the easterly course and put them west by north with the wind on the starboard beam. The weather held; they cooked by day and sweated by night, and the ship sailed beneath streams of flit-wraiths that hung over the water like arches of ghostly green light.

On the twenty-first, as the promise of dawn was just graying the eastern sky, they had their chance to prove themselves.

Locke was knocked out of a too-short sleep by an elbow to the ribs. He awoke to confusion; the men of the scrub watch were shifting, stumbling, and muttering all around him.

“Sail ho,” said Jean.

“Heard it from the masthead just a minute ago,” said someone near the door. “Two points off the starboard quarter. That's well east and a little north of us, hull down.”

“That's good,” said Jabril, yawning. “The dawn glimpse.”

“Dawn?” It still seemed dark, and Locke rubbed his sleep-blurred eyes. “Dawn already? Since I no longer have to pretend to know what the hell I'm doing, what's a dawn glimpse?”

“Sun's coming up over the horizon, see?” Jabril seemed to relish the chance to lecture Locke. “Over in the east. We're still in shadow over here, to the west a' them. Hard to see us, but we got a good eye on them with that faint light behind their masts, savvy?”

“Right,” said Locke. “Seems like a good thing.”

“We're for her,” said Aspel. “We'll move in and take her. This ship is loaded with crew, and Drakasha's a bloody-handed bitch.”

“It's a fight for us,” said Streva. “We'll go first.”

“Aye, and prove ourselves,” said Aspel. “Prove ourselves and be quits with this scrub watch shit.”

“Don't be tying silver ribbons on your cock just yet,” said Jabril. “We don't know her heading, or what speed she makes, or what her best point of sailing is. She might be a ship of war. Might even be part of a squadron.”

“Be fucked, Jabbi,” said someone without real malice. “Don't you want to be gone from scrub watch?”

“Hey, time comes to board her, I'll row the boat naked and attack the bastards with my good fuckin' looks. Just wait and see if she's prey, is all I'm sayin'.”

There was noise and commotion on deck; orders were shouted. The men at the entrance strained to hear and see everything.

“Delmastro's sending people up the lines,” said one of them. “Looks like we're going to come north a few points. They're doing it quick-like.”

“Nothing's more suspicious than a sudden change of sail, if they see us,” said Jabril. “She wants us to be nearer their course before we're spotted, so it looks natural.”

Minutes passed; Locke blinked and settled back down against his familiar bulkhead. If action wasn't imminent, there was always time for a few more minutes of sleep. From the groaning and shuffling around him, he wasn't alone in that opinion.

He awoke a few minutes later—the sky seen through the ventilation hatch was lighter gray—to Lieutenant Delmastro's voice coming from the undercastle entrance.

“…where you are for now. Keep quiet and out of sight. It's about five minutes to the switchover from Red to Blue, but we're suspending regular watches for action. We'll be sending Red down in bits and pieces, and half of Blue will come up to replace them. We want to look like a merchant brig, not a prowler with a heavy crew.”

Locke craned his neck to look out over the shadowy shapes around him. Just past Delmastro, in the predawn murk, he could see crewfolk at the waist wrestling several large barrels toward the ship's larboard rail.

“Smoke barrels on deck,” called a woman.

“No open flames on deck,” shouted Ezri. “No smoking. Alchemical lights only. Pass the word.”

Minutes passed, and the light of dawn grew steadily. Locke nonetheless found his eyelids creeping back downward. He sighed relaxed, and—

“On deck there,” came a shout from the foremast head. “Send to the captain she's got three masts, and she's northwest by west. Topsails.”

“Aye, three masts, northwest by west, topsails,” shouted Ezri. “How does she bear?”

“Broad on the starboard beam, aft a point maybe.”

“Keep sharp. Is she still hull down?”

“Aye.”

“The moment she lifts her skirts over that horizon, you peek and tell us what's under them.” Ezri returned to the undercastle and pounded loudly on the bulkhead beside the entrance. “Scrub watch, rouse up. Stretch your legs and use the craplines, then get back under here. Be quick. We'll be fighting or running soon enough. Best to have your innards in good order.”

It was less like moving with a crowd than being squeezed from a tube. Locke found himself pushed onto deck, and he curled his back and stretched. Jean did likewise, then stepped up beside Delmastro. Locke raised an eyebrow; the little lieutenant seemed to tolerate Jean's conversation to the same extent that she disdained his. So long as one of them was getting information from her, he supposed.